Category Archives: Neville

WHEN DO YOU WANT TO DIE?

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The date that’s automatically entered is when I would like to die (November 17th, 2067). That will be my 85th birthday, and if I’m not dead already by then, I’ll make it happen.

I can’t recklessly kill myself at 85 though, there will be a small set of rules around it:

I can’t cause extra work or inconvenience for living people (so no crashing a car at 120mph off a cliff, some team of people would have to spend money & time cleaning that up).

Completely wrap up all family and business affairs.

I can’t hurt anyone else in the process.

Can’t do it in a way that bums people out.

The current coolest way I can think to do this (and adhere to all rules) is:

Skydive into an active volcano.

I was born Zoroastrian (a really small religion), and a neat thing about the ways Zoroastrians in India handle dead bodies is they leave the body out for vultures to eat.

The theory behind this is your body goes back into the Earth.

I always thought this was kind of a neat solution.

By skydiving into an active volcano I would:
-Go back into the Earth.
-Wouldn’t hurt anyone.
-Would also get to SKYDIVE INTO AN ACTIVE VOLCANO which let’s be honest…..sounds awesome!

This idea has been with me for a really really long time. The way death is handled and discussed is currently pretty lame.

Think about it:
Every single person that has ever lived in the history of Earth…..has so far died. Therefore I think this “dying” concept is something that warrants some conversation, and maybe even a more humane way of doing it.

There’s many reasons I am a proponent of legalized euthanasia:

1.) You can’t control when you’re born, but you can control when you die. This can make a lot of people’s final years much more enjoyable and comfortable.

2.) By controlling the date of your death you can correctly forecast how much money you will need to live out your life. If you don’t know the date, you could live for 1 year or 30 years more. Those two different options require vastly different sums of money and planning.

3.) I equate the mental construct of “knowing my expiration date” to cramming for a test:
If you have a geography test in 6 months, you will probably not care too much at this moment and goof off. However if you have a geography test in three hours, you will probably buckle down and study like crazy!

For me personally, knowing the expiration date helps me do more things while I’m alive.

Some background about where this idea came from:
1.) I read a lot of books in middle school and high school that discussed this subject, and it made perfect sense that people should plan for their death. It almost sounds silly NOT to.

2.) On trips to India I’d see people being kept alive that in all honesty should just be put down. If someone’s life is full of misery and pain with no end in sight (in fact it’ll probably just get worse), why not put them down comfortably and in a humane way? We put down our beloved dogs like that because we want them to be comfortable, why not us?

3.) In high school I volunteered in an Alzheimers ward. It truly showed me how humans are mechanical machines that like all other machines tend to break down, require more and more maintenance, and at some point, need to be decommissioned.

Believe it or not I was heartless enough NOT to be affected by the patients with Alzheimers. I could handle that. What I DID feel was when the families of those patients would come to visit the Alzheimers ward, and the patient wouldn’t even recognize their own daughter or son or grandkids. Watching those people break down in tears from their loved ones not even recognizing them….I get slightly teary just thinking about it.

Common retorts to this argument:

“What if medicine advances and at 85 years old it’s like you’re 20?”
In that case I would modify the decision based on those new life circumstances. The equation I’d use is simple:

If life is sucky = Get ready for that volcano jump!
If life is great = Maybe keep on going.

“Don’t you want to live forever?”
Meh. Not really. I’d like to enjoy my time on stage, and then exit when the time feels right.

“How do you KNOW you won’t chicken out and not do it????”
This is an action I intend to take over 50+ years into the future, there’s no way to know for SURE this will still be my decision at the time. However at the moment, with the current state of technology, it is.

Sincerely,
Neville Medhora (1982 – 2067)

P.S. If you’d like to see how much time (in years/months/days/hours/minutes/seconds) you have to live, there’s a working Death Calculator at the top of this post!

February 2014:
—Took a Workcation to Thailand. Visited Bangkok and the islands. Got lots of work done and good ideas.

March 2014:
—Made several hundred more NevBox’s for sale and for gifts.

—Partied it up during SXSW 2014. People were fascinated by the 3D printer. My apartment complex politely requested, “I take down the 3D printed penis in the window.” I bet that was the first time an apartment manager has EVER made that request in history!

NevBlog.com was born on November 17th, 2004 (almost TEN years ago!!) to keep track of my financial situation.

It was never meant to be read by another human being other than myself.

Now why would a blog be so important for me? It’s for a simple reason:I FORGET EVERYTHING.

Ask me what I did in March 2006….and I have no freaking clue.

However I can just go to the sidebar of my blog and click on the March 2006 archives….and INSTANTLY it all comes flooding back. Simply reading a few sentences or seeing some images from that time allows me to instantly recall everything that was happening around that time.

For this reason, my blog acts as my surrogate brain. Retaining all the memories I would otherwise surely forget.

So for keeping my brain alive, thanks NevBlog :-)

The stats below don’t tell the whole story, but starting sometime in 2005 I installed Google Analytics, and here are the stats from a blog “nobody was supposed to read”:
For starters, it’s cool that OVER ONE MILLION PEOPLE have viewed something I created. Maybe I should put a badge on NevBlog saying “Now seen by over 1.5million people!” :-)

Here’s some fuzzy math on how many cumulative hours have been spent on my site:

We took a two week “workcation” to Thailand. Basically the idea was: Sit on a beach, do work.

I’ve done it before and it’s a great way to work!

The only problem is you have to go with people who are ALSO under the impression they’re going on the trip mainly to work. Otherwise they’ll drag you into traveling around all day (total 1st world problem).

Here was our trip Itinerary:

Flew from Austin to Houston to Japan (had AWESOME sushi), then into Bangkok for two days.

Took flight into Ko Samui and ended up staying there for a night (I loved the vibe of that island).

Took a ferry ride into Ko Tao, it was a backpacker kind of town. Did some awesome scuba diving there (apparently it’s famous for that).

Took a long boat ride + bus to Krabi to hang out with Edmund (who we met through AppSumo).

We got setup with scooters, a secluded beach resort, a bungalow on the beach, and all the food & drinks we could order (all for $93 for 3 nights for BOTH people)!! This part of the trip was so awesome.

Flew back to Bangkok for a few days.

(I’ll elaborate more with recommendations later when I’m not half-delirious writing this).

So anyhow, here’s a summary of the trip in pictures:

The first day on the beach on the Ko Samui island I made my goals so I could clearly work on a set number of things and not get too distracted:

In Bangkok we totally randomly met up with Nomadic Matt. In case you don’t know Matt’s site, he travels around the world and gives advice on where to eat/stay/travel. In fact, every time I researched an island to stay on, I would Google the island with his website after it in order to get his recommendations, like: “Ko Tao Nomadic Matt”.

Here’s Me, Matt, and Noah having a beer in a very westernized area of Bangkok:

Relaxing on Koh San Road (where all the backpackers hangout), waiting to get my foot massage:

Know those “riots” going on in Bangkok? We went to them, and they were very very peaceful. It was more like a market or festival than a “riot”:

To avoid the jet lag getting me the first night, I downed a couple of these “real” Red Bulls. They’ve got some kick to them!

ASIAN FOOD EVERYWHERE:

This was us at 5:30am catching the SuperBowl at a nice hotel in Bangkok that had the game playing. It was full of Americans (the very few other Americans we saw on the entire trip):

Noah working diligently during the SuperBowl:

Drinking custom-made fruit smoothies for about a dollar a piece:

One of the “rioters” :-P

Meow meow meow:

Coconuts…..my FAVORITE:

Ordering food on the beach while working in perfect weather:

I REALLLLLLYYYY liked the vibe of Ko Samui. Next I come to Thailand I’m going back. It was touristy enough to where there were a lot of nice hotels and restaurants and things to do, but NOT so touristy it ruined the mood. The water was so perfect and calm, you could walk in the water over a 100 meters and still stand up till your waist:

Ko Samui:

I had to put this in there so I remembered…..

The guy who drove us to the airport had the sickest bus I’d ever seen! It had huge subwoofers in the back, it was pimped out with gold mirrors and rims, and that sound system inside sounded amazing:

Relaxing in the pimp bus:

Headed out on a ferry to Ko Tao Island:

Perfect breeze and weather for a ferry ride. It was 100% foreigners:

Cool scenery:

Noah wore that Taco Shirt LITERALLY the whole trip except the last day!

Lol…..Noah was messing with the hotel in Ko Tao when he booked, and said it was our “anniversary” so this is how we found our hotel room!! Hahahahahah

Lol….I walk in the hotel room to find Noah working from a bed of roses:

In Ko Tao we met up with an AppSumo fan Edmund who owned a bunch of business in nearby Krabi (hotel, hostel, restaurant, travel agency), and he showed us around:

Ko Tao was cool……but most of it was foreigners. So you’d see scooters zipping everywhere, but it was all white people on them:

Edmund scoring us some kebab skewers for a snack…..LOVED the cheap road-side food in Thailand. Actually much prefer it to the nicer restaurants:

Discovered a random Mui Thai gym in Ko Tao….it was all foreigners:

Crossfit??!?!? In Koh Tao?!??! Very random:

This is how I woke up to work:

Working early morning (still getting up at weird times with jet lag):

THIS is what a workcation is supposed to be!! Beach, good food, maybe beer, fast wifi, perfect weather. It got even better later on into the trip because we weren’t even at a resort:

I brought my Martin Backpacker guitar and we played a few tunes on the beach (Edmund was formerly a rockstar the band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus):

Great views that pictures don’t quite translate:

Chilling and working:

Working from a restaurant thingy on a cliff:

View from the resort balcony where we were working:

Dasch meow??

Took a ferry outta Ko Tao:

Sat in the “VIP” section of the bus there which no one knew about…..so for the same price as everyone else, we road in style in our own section of the bus!

Arrive in Krabi…..this is the road we’d drive on everyday with those cool Avatar-looking mountains in the background:

Here were the scooters we rented for our entire stay in Krabi…..TWO of them for less than $18 total. Mine was the sky-blue one with random logos all over it. Fortunately both me and Noah have our motorcycle licenses AND both have scooters back in Ausin, so we’re experienced. But it doesn’t really matter over there, they’d give you a scooter in two seconds without asking if you know how to ride one!

Scooter crashes by tourists are so common, they call the road rash you get a “Thai Tattoo”:

More coconuts for me!

One of Edmunds businesses in Krabi was a hostel with a really cool vibe to it….so we spent time working from there:

Noah took over job as bartender:

Scooterizing:

Lol…..this random poster on the wall of the hostel always cracked me up!

This is at our bungalow on the beach in Krabi where we stayed a few days (which was AWESOME by the way). One day I was shaving my beard, and decided to see what a goatee on me looks like:

Scuba diving in Koh Tao:

Doing a quick re-fresher of how to not die in the ocean before going scuba’ing in some world-famous waters:

One of our dive locations:

Before taking the plunge:

IMMA SCUBA DIVER!

Workcation scenes: Me working from a beach:

Hammock’ing:

Hammock and the “restaurant” area for the bungalows we stayed at. There were just 4 locals who lived at the resort and did all the work/cooking. So peaceful. One day we saw a total of only 9 human beings:

Chillaxing. That weather was utterly perfect:

Photos we HAD to take before leaving this beautiful location. Me relaxing by the ocean:

Noah chilling by the ocean. The water was so warm and mild and non-wavy you could sit there comfortably:

Aaaannddd of course I have to end off the album with a couple of Handstand pics!!

By the way, the reason I do these “I just took a vacation, here are my photos posts” is for my own memory. I forget EVERYTHING, but if I see a picture of the event I can recall it perfectly.

So this is my way of keeping this memory alive!

Hope you enjoyed the pics and got a sense of the workcation.

If you want to do your own workcation, based on our experience (of this trip and others), we know there’s some factors that affect this:

Have solid goals of what you want to get done during the trip, and tell others so you’re accountable.

Other people you go with should be on the same page of wanting to work at least 4-6 hours a day.

Don’t be moving so much….it disrupts the whole working and “resetting” process.

The goal of the trip is NOT to travel around and be a tourist….it’s to work. Of course there’s a mix of touristy stuff and sightseeing thrown in, but it needs to be a good balance.

Don’t drink too much alcohol or party too late except on designated days. This throws off the whole work schedule.

Having a perfect breeze, comfortable accommodations, fast internet, good local food, and preferably a beach nearby is optimal.

In the future we might do a workcation where we take a bunch of other people along with us. Whatchya think?

It’s FRIDAY!! In college that used to mean soon as it became dark outside I would get jitters to go out. I literally had to go out on the weekends. Hanging with friends, frat parties, clubbing, bowling, art gallery opening, picnics, meteor watching parties, house party…..I ALWAYS had to do something on the weekends, I literally could not stay home or I’d get jittery.

This was probably a remnant of my childhood since my parents were very socially active. I remember through elementary school, middle school, and high school, it was pretty much the norm to attend at least 2-3 parties over the weekend plus other activities.

Friends at school would tell me their family just, “stayed at home and got a movie from Blockbuster and ordered a pizza.” This was LAME I thought, since that was never a normal thing for my active family.

Even after college I kept that pace up…..actually I increased it.
Remove the classes + add some income = party time!

Now all this partying wasn’t just drinking and crazy stuff. A lot of times it was cool events and social clubs and entrepreneur clubs and tech meetups, but it was still an active social life.

However, now that I’m 30 (almost 31), it’s slowed down a bit.

People always say “As I get older I can’t drink as much” or “As I get older I can’t go out as much.”

…..I understand that, but I don’t think it’s fully a function of age.

For the drinking part, physiologically you CAN drink as much when you’re older, but the increased fat, decreased muscle mass, age-related problems, medications, and decreased frequency of drinking (aka lower tolerance) causes this for the most part.

For the going out part, I agree some of it is a decreased stamina issue as you age, but I think a whooollee lot of it is a DESIRE issue.

Let me nerdily calculate this out for you:

Let’s assume I entered college at age 18. I was in college for 5 years (slow track for me).
How many times do you think I went out?

45 weeks a year I did at least two events (extremely lowball figure) = 90 x 5 years =450 times.
After college from age 23 till 26 I went out 5 days a week probably 45 weeks of the year. 45 x 5 x 4 =900 times.

From age 26-30 went out maybe400 times.

…..ok, enough fuzzy math (and notice I was only account for 45 weeks a year not 52….I assume all those numbers are WAY more especially during the crazy holiday times.

THE POINT OF THIS IS:

By the time someone with a reasonably active social life is 30, they’ve been “out” over 2,000 times!

That number kinda blows your mind right??

When I was 23 if someone said, “Hey let’s randomly go out to 6th St!” (austin’s party area) I was sooooo down.

But at age 30 if someone said, “Hey it’s Tuesday let’s randomly go out to 6th St and get drunk” I would probably say ::in nerdy excited voice:: “No thanks I’m gonna sit at home and get some work done then read, then blog, then play with my 3D printer.”

That’s not always true, but it happens more and more frequently as I get older.But it’s NOT a function of age, it’s a function of experience.

Those two things just happen to correlate to each other.

To prove this….see if you know someone who missed out on much of their youthful freedom. Maybe they got married crazily early then got a divorce when older, or always lived at home with strict parents, or had to provide for their family and never got to play.

When these people get older then all of a sudden come into freedom, they start going out with the youthful exuberance of a 21 year old, even though they’re weirdly old to be acting like that. But eventually they get over it….like after going out 2,000 times :-P

Anyhow, there was no real point to this email other than to present an alternative view of this.
So if you’re not going out as much, it’s not because you’re old…..maybe you’re just not as EXCITED for the same old stuff anymore. And maybe other things in life become more exciting.